After attending his 6th AWS re:Invent 2017 last month, cloud evangelist and founder of IOD Ofir Nachmani made the claim that AWS is still the only serious cloud player. What keeps AWS a market leader, he said, is their focus on not just the near-term future, but the long-term.
But what can we expect in the near-term? We asked our top cloud experts for their predictions about what’s going to explode in the industry in 2018. Here’s what some had to say about emerging or growing trends to expect in the coming year.

Pay Attention to…

Piotr Gaczkowski: “We will definitely continue to see attention being paid to container orchestration. Microservices and containers are gaining serious traction. Even though there are several players, Kubernetes so far seems to be the best solution in the space. I expect it will gain both a larger user base, and subsequently, more features. An easy-to-use installer/reference platform will certainly help to boost its adoption.

In 2017, we saw a focus in and buzz around decoupling (think serverless, Function as a Service). I expect to see a maturing in that area; design patterns will emerge and the toolchain will improve. Debugging and testing tools allowing for local reproduction, in particular, could be of help.

Finally, I’m guessing we will see better testing and debugging tools for both established and growing paradigms (such as Infrastructure as a Code, Configuration Management, Orchestration). After all, one of the reasons for keeping your deployments codified is so the code can be tested and reviewed.”
Petar Marinkovic: “I see private cloud getting much more attention in 2018. Whether it’s OpenStack, Azure Stack, or another (maybe something from AWS?), I expect companies to push back a little from public cloud offerings, and realize they’re spending too much money in public cloud or they’re risking too much with vendor lock-in. AWS is still growing fast, but I think companies are going to focus more on cost and look at other options.
Expect breakthroughs in machine learning and automation in IT, but also in other areas. The world of DevOps will benefit from this in being able to move from metric-based to algorithm-based automation, making production environments smarter and more resilient to downtimes and failures. ML and automation will slowly start making jobs in some industries redundant, but they will also our improve our lives in many ways. Tied with IoT, I see big potential for new smart devices. (Appliances predicting your consumption and ordering supplies for you would be cool, right? )
I expect a large breakthrough in Windows on ARM, especially in the world of ultrabooks, cheaper laptops, and tablets. Perhaps we will see another Windows phone, but if Microsoft is smart, they will stay in the area of devices with screens of maximum 8-13/15”. Longer battery life (over a day), enough resources for everyday office work (and probably more than enough for lighter development/ DevOps /IT tasks), fast resume from sleep (tablet like), plus cheaper prices, all of that seems like a reality with ARM and Windows.”
Trevor Pott: “There are several technologies that will grow in importance in 2018. Some of these are simply continuations of trends that have been occurring for some time, but many are reactions to world events. Key among these events is the rise in state-sponsored information warfare, the loss of faith in America’s word regarding its international commitments, and the rise of regulatory regimes that enshrine the rights of the individual over those of the state (or corporations) such as GDPR.
Data masking technologies are one category where I expect to see explosive growth. These technologies are used to provide realistic seeming data to bots, developers and analysis tools for the construction of various models or the creation of software. This allows working with real, live production data while still hiding the sensitive bits; creating a sort of ‘hybrid simulacra’ dataset. Advanced data masking technologies will be combined with robust Role Based Access Control (RBAC) systems to provide access to sensitive data only to exactly those individuals who require access, are cleared for access, have a reason to access the data at that time, and are accessing it from a secure endpoint in a legal jurisdiction where that data can be reasonably revealed.
Social anti-malware is a category of technologies where startups currently in stealth mode should start to come out of stealth in 2018. The basic purpose of social anti-malware is to detect state-sponsored social media bots, various flavors of propaganda, blatant lies, urban legends, conspiracy theories and other well known ‘alternative facts’ sources and flag them up to the user. Hopefully with links to credible sources truth that care about little things like facts. The internet detects attempts to compromise it and routes around it; this is just one more way of doing so.
Multi-cloud adaptive storage fabrics are the next generation storage technologies to watch. These fabrics will be able to place storage anywhere, from public clouds to regional service providers all the way down to local storage on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These fabrics will focus on rapid data ingestion into the fabric, data resiliency throughout the fabric, and the ability to not only move data where you need it, but to pre-seed that data where you want it to be before you need it there. This is critical for those organizations looking to perform analytics on data from large scale deployments of sensors of telemetry, but which may want to use Bulk Data Computational Analysis (BDCA) tools from multiple providers.” 
Maish Saidel-Keesing: “I see three major trends in 2018. 1. AWS will continue to innovate at an amazing pace. There will be no slowing down, as much as industry professionals cannot believe they can keep up the pace, they will! 2. Docker as a product will no longer be relevant in the enterprise. Kubernetes is the wonder child of the year, and has eaten their lunch. 3. Openstack will continue to lose contributions from the globe, except for one demographic that will continue to grow: China. Interest will continue to decrease, I believe, and will wither out in the next 18 months.”  
Ofir Nachmani: “Watch out…AWS is going to rock our worlds when it comes to analytics and prediction, not to mention deep learning and layers that are high above the infrastructure. As Marc Andreesen wrote, ‘software is eating up the world.’
And let me tell you, AWS is hungry.”

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What are your cloud trend predictions for 2018? Leave them in the comment section below.
Are you interested in becoming an IOD expert? Be in touch with sharona@iamondemand.com.